ssd swap - high usage of Terabytes Written

[ValSalva]

Remember when the Spotify app was writing copious amounts of data to SSD's just over four years ago? Interesting. I still use a tiny thumb drive on my iMac for Spotify's cache, even though the issue has been fixed. Too bad that can't be done for macOS swap, right? At least until Apple fixes this issue.

I returned my M1 MBP for other reasons: I would shut it down only to have it spontaneously restart ten seconds later and come up with a message saying it had been shut down improperly with a kernel panic notice. My point here is that I knew we were beta testing Apple's new hardware. When it affected me I cut my loses because I knew I could still obtain a refund.

Hopefully fixes this issue, whether it's a reporting bug or an actual excess SSD writing bug.

 

[VitoBotta]

Off-topic, but how well is Docker running on Apple Silicon now? Just for ARM images or using QEMU or similar for x86 images?

Is this native or via Rosetta? How did you install it?

Thanks!

It works pretty well actually! There were some networking issues with the first preview but it's improving all the time. It works well for me and I am working with it almost every day. Performance is good with ARM images and less good with x86 images of course due to emulation. But they work.
It's native BTW but still a tech preview version.

The "Tab Overview" icon in the top-right of Safari. I don't normally have more than 20-30 tabs in a Safari window, so it's easy enough to find the tab visually.


LOL I a so used to having just a few tabs at all times that I don't think I've ever used that button

I use Command-Shift-Left/Right to quickly scroll through the various tabs, hitting Command-R to reload when needed.

I also use Home, End, Page Up/Down, and arrow keys to quickly navigate webpages. Tab comes in handy for filling in forms. I also use the mouse and scroll wheel, but that is often slower than the keyboard.

I've been a hardcore gamer for 40+ years, so it all seems fairly natural to me.

I'm a point and click guy mostly, that's why I am no longer using VIM

Maybe the core problem is reading MacRumors.com...1.47GB for a single tab - good grief!

View attachment 1739555

That's it!

 

[inversed]

It's not the kernel that's doing writes on my M1, it's launchd that goes crazy; writing tens of GB an hour if Photoshop or Lightroom Classic are running and I'm using Camera Raw.

E.g in the first hour this morning when I was doing something else, mainly Mail, Music, Safari, launchd wrote c370MB. I start Photoshop, use the Camera Raw filter and within 15 minutes it's written another 4GB and repeating multi-GB writes every minute or two. Stop Photoshop and the launchd writes stop. Same story with Lightroom Classic when I do edits (browsing seems less of a problem). In both cases, no swapping and the kernel writes have barely moved.

Anyway, I posted a bug report on the Adobe site. Don't actually expect them to do anything, things I posted a decade ago are still not fixed...

10GB an hour is pretty normal with PS depending on your file size. This morning i was working on 1.5-1.8GB files and i got quickly to 20GB write with the file saves, etc. This is inline with what i get on my Mac Pro.

 

[Homy]

 

[Mac... nificent]

Good video.

If this issue isn't as widespread as some would have us believe, then I wouldn't be surprised if intel wasn't behind it.

 

[ValSalva]

Good video.

If this issue isn't as widespread as some would have us believe, then I wouldn't be surprised if intel wasn't behind it.

You mean you wouldn't be surprised if Intel was behind it? You think Intel is desperate? Probably so. It apparently affects some Intel Macs though. Also, you'd have to assume a lot of the participants in the thread are deliberately spreading misinformation …

 

[ItWasNotMe]

10GB an hour is pretty normal with PS depending on your file size. This morning i was working on 1.5-1.8GB files and i got quickly to 20GB write with the file saves, etc. This is inline with what i get on my Mac Pro.

This is NOT file saves, its data that has been written by launchd.

PS itself wrote about 600mb which is exactly what I'd expect from the files I was editing

 

[VitoBotta]

Awesome video, thanks for sharing. Maybe I shouldn't be too worried, even though my 16/256 mini is now at 150 TB written in 68 days.... Will see. For now I will just keep using the computer as I normally do and keep an eye.

 

[Mac... nificent]

You mean you wouldn't be surprised if Intel was behind it? You think Intel is desperate? Probably so.

Yep. Intel processors are like the first slice of bread. Everyone knows about them, but no one really wants to do anything with them.

 

[thadoggfather]

im an idiot - misread the results yesterday

590 GB data read
192 GB write by kernel_task in Activity Monitor

24 days uptime

base M1 Air

glad my SSD isn't being decimated

should be noted, Im not running a single Intel app. Everything is Apple silicon. when/if I do, ill keep an eye on it

 

[flopticalcube]

I doubt Intel is behind this but they may be helping in the promoting of the issue in some roundabout way. Tiger Lake wasn't terribly impressive and new Rocket Lake CPUs look terrible: power-hungry and slow. Doesn't bode well for them.

 

[Baff]

I filled out the Constant Geekery survey to add my data.

After quitting Safari last night and sleeping (auto and manual) my computer multiple times, it had about 10GB of writes over about 16 hours, that includes some gaming. After quitting Safari, my memory, cache and swap usage dropped drastically.

I went from 100 tabs down to 65, closing many of the pages that were using the most memory and that seems to have helped significantly today.

I had just switched from Chrome over to Safari a few days ago, I saw this as my chance to get away from Google. Over the next week I may try Chrome again or Microsoft Edge (Yuck!) or Firefox to see if that improves anything. I might also try out Safari Reader Mode, though I already have AdBlock Plus and Ghostery, so not sure that will change much.

 

[VitoBotta]

I filled out the Constant Geekery survey to add my data.

After quitting Safari last night and sleeping (auto and manual) my computer multiple times, it had about 10GB of writes over about 16 hours, that includes some gaming. After quitting Safari, my memory, cache and swap usage dropped drastically.

I went from 100 tabs down to 65, closing many of the pages that were using the most memory and that seems to have helped significantly today.

I had just switched from Chrome over to Safari a few days ago, I saw this as my chance to get away from Google. Over the next week I may try Chrome again or Microsoft Edge (Yuck!) or Firefox to see if that improves anything. I might also try out Safari Reader Mode, though I already have AdBlock Plus and Ghostery, so not sure that will change much.

Edge is actually a decent browser btw.

 

[Baff]

SWAP usage however is not the cause.

Please explain why.

 

[Baff]

Edge is actually a decent browser btw.

Maybe so, but I have used a lot of MS products over the last 40 years and regretted it almost every time.

 

[VitoBotta]

Maybe so, but I have used a lot of MS products over the last 40 years and regretted it almost every time.

Well, yeah usually they are crap, but Edge is quite good. I am still using Safari as the main browser though since it's anyway the fastest still.

 

[Wildkraut]

Just disabled my powernap per terminal:
"sudo pmset -a powernap 0"

Somehow i think it's powernap waking up the M1, checking for updates, then writing RAM back to swap, and that over and over again, multiple times a day...

PS: Once you change any energy settings, it sets powernap back to 1.

 

[VitoBotta]

Just disabled my powernap per terminal:
"sudo pmset -a powernap 0"

Somehow i think it's powernap waking up the M1, checking for updates, then writing RAM back to swap, and that over and over again, multiple times a day...

Does that work with the mini too?

 

[Wildkraut]

Does that work with the mini too?

Yeah it should.

With "sudo pmset -g" you can see all available options

But once you change any energy settings in system preferences, it sets powernap back to 1.

 

[Mac... nificent]

I have used a lot of MS products over the last 40 years and regretted it almost every time.

Yep, same here. I will never willingly use another Microsoft product. Safari and the new DuckDuckGo Brave browser are both very good.

 

[VitoBotta]

Yeah it should.

With "sudo pmset -g" you can see all available options

But once you change any energy settings in system preferences, it sets powernap back to 1.

Awesome, thanks. Will give it a try.

 

[chouseworth]

Just disabled my powernap per terminal:
"sudo pmset -a powernap 0"

Somehow i think it's powernap waking up the M1, checking for updates, then writing RAM back to swap, and that over and over again, multiple times a day...

PS: Once you change any energy settings, it sets powernap back to 1.

Were you seeing abnormally high TBW activity before turning off powernap? What kind of improvement did you see?

 

[Wildkraut]

Were you seeing abnormally high TBW activity before turning off powernap? What kind of improvement did you see?

Yeah I have 750GB data written, and that can't be true with my usage, I have the 16GB RAM M1 and barely used it.
Dunno, I just disabled it to see how it goes, time will tell.

I think this issue comes from something like RAM, sleep to disk, or powernap related, by writing bigger chunks of data to disk, but it's just an assumption.

 

[CMMChris]

Please explain why.

I already did countless times in this topic.

• Swapping doesn't generate enough SSD load to cause 100+ TBW within a couple weeks like some users report.
• If Swapping was the cause this phenomenon would be observable for a long time already, which is not the case.
• If Swapping was the cause, people who only run light tasks such as web browsing would not be affected, yet they are.
• If Swapping was the cause, I would have the issue myself because I am using my 16GB M1 MBP for workloads that have been maxing out my Hackintoshes 32GB of RAM and I am Swapping a lot. Yet here I am at 2.95 TBW after 3.5 months of heavy usage.

 

[blaraka]

I already did countless times in this topic.

• Swapping doesn't generate enough SSD load to cause 100+ TBW within a couple weeks like some users report.
• If Swapping was the cause this phenomenon would be observable for a long time already, which is not the case.
• If Swapping was the cause, people who only run light tasks such as web browsing would not be affected, yet they are.
• If Swapping was the cause, I would have the issue myself because I am using my 16GB M1 MBP for workloads that have been maxing out my Hackintoshes 32GB of RAM and I am Swapping a lot. Yet here I am at 2.95 TBW after 3.5 months of heavy usage.

- Well, it is for me. It happens when Lightroom or Lightroom Classic claims huge amounts of memory - with full GPU acceleration on, the amount of RAM grows so crazy that kernel_task writes GIGABYTES in minutes. If I'd leave that on and use Lightroom regularly I'd easily get 100TBW within couple of weeks. Since I've realised early enough I'm at 10TBW now, using Lightroom with basic GPU acceleration and whenever possible remembering to turn it off and on to prevent it from spiralling off into causing crazy swapping.

I'm not saying by that swapping in itself is evil and until this thread exploded I was quite sure it's Adobe's fault [the way GPU acceleration code of CameraRaw claims memory has to be somehow causing memory leaks on M1s], but the direct cause of writes IS SWAPPING.

- I'm not sure what you mean by "a long time". Afaik it's observable from day one on M1 systems. I got my on 10th of December and I've noticed it straight away thanks to reports from Lightroom users on this very forum.
I've saved myself from trashing the SSD by switching off full GPU acceleration in Lightroom.

- I cannot speak about that cause with 16GB RAM I don't run into that scenario. That said, web browsers are known for memory hogging and for me it's very easy to imagine scenario in which "person doing browsing" (e.g. with tons of unclosed tabs - a lot of people do that) generates enough memory pressure to cause heavy M1-style swapping on 8GB machine.

- What's your workload?